- A Second Brain is only useful to you
if you can quickly and painlessly get information
into it whenever you need to do so.
And with Notion,
that's very easy when you're writing your own content.
But what about when it comes to saving pages
and highlights that you find out on the web?
Well, in this video,
I'm gonna share the absolute best tool that I have found
for saving those pages and highlights
into your Notion workspace.
It is called Save to Notion, and it's a free extension
for both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge
that let's you do things like, well, this.
Here, I've got a webpage on SitePoint
about Boolean data types,
which I am learning about right now.
And I have my Note Inbox here in my Notion workspace,
which is part of my greater Second Brain.
And I want to clip this article into my Note Inbox.
I can use the Save to Notion extension to do that
by clicking up here, simply adding this new page,
and I see it pop up right there.
But in addition to that,
I can also clip individual pieces of text from the article.
So if I'm doing research, I can easily highlight a line,
just like this, right click, and hit Add Highlight.
And it instantly shows up inside of my Notion workspace.
And I can go through the entire article
repeating this process,
and I'm gonna get a nice summarized version
with my personal highlights for that article,
which will be very useful if I wanna review it later on,
or even use it to write content.
So in this video,
I'm gonna show you exactly how to set up
the Save to Notion extension in your browser,
and how to get more use out of it
with some advanced tips and tricks.
I'm also going to briefly cover some alternatives
to this extension and share why I use this personally
instead of those alternatives.
As always, I've got a table of contents
right there and down below,
so you can skip around the video as you please.
And we're gonna cover those alternatives a bit later
in the video, but I do wanna kick this off
with a bit of a summarization overview
for why I like this extension so much.
First and foremost, instead of clipping the entirety
of the page content into my Notion workspace,
like the official Web Clipper does,
I can clip specific and individual highlights,
and they even get highlighted on the webpage.
Though unfortunately, they do not persist
if I refresh the webpage.
I do wish that would be an added feature in the future.
Another reason I like this is that they instantly show up
in my Notion workspace using something like a Readwise,
which we'll cover a bit later.
That takes quite a bit of time
to travel through the various APIs.
This happens basically instantly.
And possibly my favorite part of this extension is the fact
that I can set up multiple destinations,
which plays really well with my Ultimate Brain system
that has multiple different resources
and areas for different parts of my life
and different topics that I'm interested in.
So how do you actually use this extension?
Well, it's a browser extension.
So the first thing you're gonna wanna do is go
over to the Chrome Web Store.
I'm gonna grab my big Chrome window here and install it.
So I will actually show you how to do that
by first removing it from my current Chrome instance.
And then I'm going to simply Google Save to Notion,
and find it here on the Chrome Web Store.
I'm gonna add to Chrome,
just like you would with any other extension.
And this also works exactly the same
inside of Microsoft Edge, since inside of Edge,
you can use Chrome extensions natively now,
which is pretty cool.
So to start using this Save to Notion extension,
I'm gonna go over to a random article
on my Chrome instance here
just to get off of the Chrome Web Store.
And then I'm gonna notice
that I don't see the Save to Notion extension
here in my little toolbar here.
I've got the official Notion Web Clipper,
but the Save to Notion extension actually
uses a little paper airplane icon.
So I need to click this little puzzle piece,
find it right here,
and then hit the little pin icon to make sure
it's up in my toolbar.
From there, I can move it around as needed.
So I'm gonna move it to the far left,
and then I can actually start configuring it.
And to do that, you can simply click the extension,
and you're gonna have the option to start adding forms,
which are gonna be the default destinations
with some default settings where you're gonna
send your highlights.
So the first one that I want to create
is gonna be for my Note Inbox.
If you saw my video last month
of my complete Second Brain system inside of Notion,
you will know that inside of my notes page
I have a Note Inbox right here.
And an inbox is basically just a default destination
for things that come into your life.
In this case, there are gonna be notes that I take myself,
but also web captures, clips, and highlights.
And later on, I can process those notes.
I can add them to resources or areas
using Tiago Forte's PARA system,
but normally, I want notes to first go
to a default destination,
so I don't have to process them in the moment.
So the first destination that we wanna set up
inside of Save to Notion is gonna be to that inbox.
I'm gonna hit Add a Form here.
And the first thing I wanna do is select
the workspace that we're going to be using here.
Since this is a video demo,
I'm gonna choose my video demo workspace right here.
And then I wanna select the database.
Now the underlying database inside of my own system
that powers my note taking
is called All Notes bracket UB bracket.
So that is exactly what I'm going to select.
And up here, you'll notice that the database name
is the name by default for this form, but I can change it.
And it's really only for my own reference
when I'm using this extension.
So I'm gonna call it Inbox, or maybe Note Inbox.
And then you'll notice we have a few other options here.
We could choose to apply a template from this database,
but I have found in over a year of using this extension
that this does not work.
So I highly recommend just leaving this alone,
because if you do pick a template here,
when you try to save a highlight, it's just gonna sit here
and spin and never actually add it to your Notion workspace.
Maybe it'll get updated in the future,
but as of now, this does not work.
So simply leave template alone.
Now you can, if you want, clip the entire page content,
and that will make it function
just like the official Notion Web Clipper.
Everything in this page is going to go to your workspace.
But I usually like to leave this unchecked
so I can highlight things individually.
You also have a few fields here,
so you're gonna have some things
fill in database properties.
And one thing I like to do when I'm setting up a form
is actually remove the content image line here,
which will take the featured image from this blog post
and actually put it into the content of the page.
I usually don't want that to happen.
So I'll click here, and I'm gonna hit Delete Field.
From there, I'll hit Save and go back.
And I now have my first default destination.
So if I want to clip this
"Science Behind How Fast Humans Can Read" article
into my workspace, I can simply hit Note Inbox,
Add New Page, and it's going to be in my workspace.
If we go over to the Notion desktop app,
we'll be able to see that
if we go to our notes page and look at our inbox.
Boom, "The Science Behind How Fast Humans Can Read".
Now, by default, since we're not clipping
the entire page content into our page here,
we have a blank page.
But now that I have made this clip,
I now have the ability to highlight anything I want,
right click it,
and then I'll have this Add Highlight button right here.
So when I hit that,
I should instantly have the highlight
show up in my Notion workspace.
Now, normally, I want all my notes to go to my inbox first,
so I can process them later.
And I've got a whole process page right here
inside of Ultimate Brain where I can come down
and I can add areas and resources
to any of these things as needed.
But sometimes, I'm gonna come across an article on the web
and I'm gonna know exactly what resource
or area it's supposed to go to.
And when that happens,
Save to Notion has a really cool feature,
which is the ability to set up multiple destinations
or multiple forms,
and then allow you to choose them on the fly.
So let's go ahead and set up another default destination,
and let's set up one for this article right here
on Content Bistro about Evergreen courses.
I know that I want to add this to my marketing resource,
which is essentially a folder of anything that I write,
but also anything that I'm clipping from the web
that relates to marketing and any of the concepts therein.
I don't want this to go to my inbox
because it'll be a lot more convenient for me
to just immediately send it to that resource.
And I can do that with Save to Notion.
So instead of sending it to the Note Inbox,
I wanna configure another form,
which I'm going to call Marketing.
So first, I'm gonna select my workspace,
which is once again going to be that video demo space.
I'm gonna select my database,
which is again going to be all notes,
since I have a master note taking database
that is categorized and organized
by a relation to my resources and areas database.
And I'm gonna leave all of this stuff the same,
except for I want to add a new field.
And that field is going to be my area resource relation
where I'm going to choose Marketing.
I'm not sure if I can type to search.
I can.
So this will automatically be applied
and send any clips using this form
directly to my marketing resource.
I also want to, again, delete my content image field here.
Don't want it.
I will name this Marketing and then I will save and go back.
And now I can click the Marketing form that I just created,
add new page.
And when I go back to my Notion workspace,
I am not going to see this page
that I've created in my inbox.
So I'll go back to the Notes page here, check the inbox.
It's not there.
Instead, if I go over to my marketing resource,
I will see it in my web clips.
"Sales on Autopilot: The Epic Guide
an Evergreen Course Business Model".
I think they should have had a D in there, so it's and.
So from there, I can do highlighting
just like I did before, but it is automatically inside
of this resource where I want it to live.
Now, one limitation that I do wanna note
about this extension
is that when you're creating your highlights
and you're selecting pieces of text,
the formatting is not going to be preserved.
So for instance, if I select these three paragraphs here
and add them to my Notion workspace,
they're gonna come in as a single block.
So when you're going through and you're highlighting things,
you're probably going to wanna stick
to single lines of text.
Otherwise, you're gonna get stuff like this.
Now this limitation is not limited to Save to Notion,
as the Readwise extension also will do this.
If you highlight across multiple paragraphs,
it's going to strip out that formatting
and give you a single block just like this.
But there is a way around it.
And that is to clip the entirety of the page content
into your workspace, like so.
If we go back over to our configuration,
and let's just say, we modify the marketing field here
with the little gear icon right there
to actually clip in the page content, save and go back.
And let's find another article on this website
just to use as an example.
Or maybe let's use this one right here
because I know there's a bullet list.
If we clip this into Marketing, add new page,
then we're gonna get all the content from this post.
And it's going to preserve its formatting, like so.
So what are the alternatives to this extension?
Well, right now, it comes down to just a couple.
One, there is the official Notion Web Clipper,
and then there is Readwise.
So let's talk briefly about those
and why I prefer Save to Notion over them in most cases.
First and foremost,
the official Notion Web Clipper only clips
entire webpage content into your workspace.
And unlike the Save to Notion extension,
you cannot define multiple destinations for your clips.
When you click on the official Web Clippers icon here,
you're gonna have to choose where you want
to add it to every single time.
So there's a bit more friction
to using the official Web Clipper.
Now, as for Readwise, that is an incredibly powerful app
that can clip a lot more than just webpage highlights.
You can do Tweets, you can do Kindle highlights,
you can do podcast snippets using these Snipped app.
So Readwise is very, very powerful,
but there is one big downside to it.
And that is that you cannot actually define
where you want the highlights to go.
There is just no way to do it.
So let me show you my actual Readwise database
inside of my own workspace here.
Readwise actually creates its own database.
And that is exactly where your highlights are going to go
no matter what you do.
There is no way to customize their destination.
Now you can kind of get around this by using
linked databases to add a view of this
into other parts of your Notion workspace,
but you're not gonna be able to do things like
automatically adding relations or other tags and properties.
Just can't do it.
So it's a bit less of a convenient thing
if you're building your own sort of Second Brain system.
Additionally, because your web highlights
have to make their way through the Readwise API,
and then the Notion API,
they take a bit longer to show up here.
Whereas with Save to Notion, they're completely instant.
So for Tweets, for podcasts, for books, I do use Readwise.
In fact, I think Readwise is the only way
to get Kindle highlights into Notion automatically,
but with web highlights,
I really prefer to use the Save to Notion extension.
I will have all the resources I mentioned in this video
in the description down below.
And if you're interested in learning more
about taking notes inside of Notion and using this tool
as an all in one Second Brain, first and foremost,
you're gonna wanna be subscribed to this channel
because I'm working on an ultimate guide
to note taking inside of Notion,
which will be on this channel very soon.
And I actually already have a full video
going over my complete Second Brain template,
which you can get to right there,
or by clicking link in the description down below.
Check that out if you are interested in using Notion
as a complete all-in-one productivity tool
for task management, note management,
and whole life organization.
And beyond that, I'm on Twitter @TomFrankly.
If you got questions, let me know what they are over there.
And I will see you in the next video.
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